Swords & Strongholds Question

I got to play 5 or 6 games of S&S over the weekend at Nerdtacular, and I’ve got two questions, both of which are probably dumb, but I’m going to ask anyway.

  1. For clarification, playing a full set of cards (a Sword, a Diplomacy, and a Stronghold) allows you to rescue a captured pawn. My interpretation was that you take this instead of moving a pawn that’s still on the board, rather than treating it as a normal turn, where you play a card after moving a pawn. I just want to check and see if that’s correct.

  2. In the “Clarifications” section of the rules, it says that you can use a Sword to push a pawn into its own Stronghold to capture it. I’m not sure exactly how this looks in play. Does the Stronghold function like the board edge in this case, so that you capture a mouse if you move it into an intersection controlled by the Stronghold, even if it’s in the center of the board? This isn’t something that occurred in play, BTW. The opportunity did come up, but I ignored it because I wasn’t sure exactly how that rule works.

Moved this post to the new S&S forum.

  1. Yes. That’s correct. You discard your hand (of the run) then “rescue” by placing your pawn in the back two starting ranks.

  2. Correct. Strongholds are agnostic once they’re in play and they count as a “board edge.” So if you’re pushed into a stronghold, yours or your opponents, you are captured!

Got it. Thanks, Luke!

What is this S&S?

It’s a Mouse Guard themed boardgame. There was a Kickstarter for it last year. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/burningwheel/mouse-guard-swords-and-strongholds